In which Grandmasterfluffles has a major PR disaster
When I was small, I had a habit of lying. I don’t mean the usual lying to get oneself out of trouble or exaggerating for attention like normal kids do, I mean senseless, pointless bullshit. I didn’t mean to do it. But sometimes when I was talking to somebody, it was as if I was possessed and bullshit would just spurt forth before I could stop it happening. My brain would sluggishly catch up with my big fat mouth only just in time to register the utter horror that I had just told a lie, and would have to spend the remainder of my relationship with that person meticulously sticking to the story and praying that they didn’t discover the truth that I was a big fat liar. Occasionally someone would catch me out, and no embarrassment in my adult life - not even the time I inadvertently showed my pants on live TV - would ever come close to the buttock-clenchingly excruciating humiliation of being outed as the big fat liar that I was. I really didn’t mean to be a liar. I just was, and couldn’t control it at all. This is the story of my very worst “outing”.

I was nine years old, my mother was playing at a folk festival for a week, and she’d taken me along for the ride. On the first day, I met some other children who were going to be there for the whole week. I was (and still am) painfully shy, and felt really uncomfortable being interrogated by them (of course they were just being friendly, I am an idiot) and it was perhaps for that reason that when they asked how old I was, I blurted out, “Ten,” before my brain had even begun to engage. As a result, I became an immediate source of interest.

“Ten? You’re ten?”
“Are you sure?”
“Really? Ten?”
“You’re so small for your age!”
“Isn’t she tiny?”
“Wow, you’re ten!”

I should say at this point that I was small for my real age too, and often got mistaken for being a year or two younger. Ten was really pushing the limits of believability. This particular pointless lie had already become a serious source of embarrassment, and I was praying that I wouldn’t bump into those kids again. Alas, they were everywhere. Every single workshop or event I went to while my mum was busy playing somewhere, there they were, and they were terribly keen to show me off to everyone. “Can you believe she’s TEN!” This went on for the whole week. They pretty much adopted me as a mascot, and I spent a miserable few days with my new friends crowing, “SHE’S TEN!” to anyone who would listen. It was one of the most miserable weeks of my life. It should have been fun - a week by the sea, with a season ticket that allowed me to attend any event I wanted from concerts to dance workshops - but I spent the whole week trying desperately to avoid the girls I’d lied to, and feeling petrified of being found out.

Somehow I got through the week with my sanity more or less intact, and the last day seemed to be going well - I hadn’t seen the girls all day, and in a few short hours, we would be speeding back home, away from my web of bullshit. I was to meet my mother at the end of her last gig, after which we would be driving to safety. Alas, an all-too-familiar shriek greeted me upon my arrival at the venue. “Hi Grandmasterfluffles! Have you met Grandmasterfluffles? Guess how old she is!” I turned around and observed, to my abject horror, that the person who they were inviting to guess my age was an acquaintance of my mother’s who for some reason they’d been chatting to.

SHIT.

“I do know Grandmasterfluffles, but actually I don’t know how old she is,” she said. Before she’d even made one guess, the girls started shrieking again. “TEN! She’s ten! Can you believe she’s ten? Isn’t she tiny!”

“Really?” the woman said, “Gosh, you are small for your age!”

I was backed into a terrible corner. Did I go with the lie, and risk this woman remarking on my small stature to my mother at some point, a course of action that would doubtless earn me the hiding of the century? Or did I admit that I’d been bullshitting all week?

“Well, actually…” I cringed, “I’m nearly ten.”

The girls all looked at me as if I’d just shat on the floor right there in front of them, got up, and flounced off in complete disgust.

Lying is bad.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 11:43, 8 replies)

Lol'ed if you'll pardon the phrase.
Sidmouth is good fun though isn't it?

*Takes wild stab in the dark*
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 11:55, closed)

It is indeed!
I got offered my first spliff there at the age of eight. Good times!
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 12:04, closed)

Sadly lost all faith last year.
It's changed too much and the loss of the main arena eradicated any festival feelings:-(

Oh yes, I'd forgotten! First and only time I've been arrested for a spliff!
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 12:07, closed)

I lived but a few miles away
and it used to be a great festival in my youth. Sadly crappy these days.

Because of that I was treated to seeing Bad Manners and Edwin Starr on my very drunken 16th birthday
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 12:19, closed)

SO REFRESHING
To read something confessional rather than endless 'this mate of mine, right, told teh liez, right, all the time, right. Nice story.
(mersault, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 12:25, closed)

I like the way you describe being 'outed'.
It opened up a few old and deeply buried painful wounds, cheers for that.

The fact that is was such a minor porky made it, click.
( SigmaX0 Dear Die Hard. You rock!, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 13:22, closed)

Adding less than one year to your age, made you a person of interest?
Must have been a boring festival.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 19:29, closed)

What band was yer mother in?

( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 23:52, closed)